Bernie J Mitchell

Engaging People in coworking since 2010

COVID-19

The Next Normal – Do We Just Get On With It?

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How is ‘the next normal’ looking for you? 

As the lockdown rules change in the UK, how do you feel about the next few months? 

Are you stuck? 

What have you changed in your business model?

Are you sick of video calls yet? 

This week I want to share about how three months of COVID lockdown is working out for me. 

It feels like an ongoing mix of triumphs and confusion, sitting down to write this to you got me in super reflective mood. 

But I’m worried about something.

It does worry me how this will land with you, which makes me more than a little concerned about the order of the words I type.

The COVID crisis is working out in so many different ways for people, so if you’re in a tough time, I’m sorry if any of this seems futile. 

My positive business friends share phases like ‘never waste a good crisis’ and are looking for ways to support each other. 

Others are having to shut down because they can’t keep going. 

How tough is tough?

I’ve been on many calls where people share with me how they’ve shut their coworking space or lost their job.

Others are in a central London flat homeschooling three kids with both parents working at home and getting cabin fever.

It would be crap for me to say I understand how it is for everyone.

And you’d know right away that I’m making that up, but it at least gives me access to another perspective. 

My COVID experience has been hearing my wife’s day at work on one side and my coworking world on the other side.

Why is clapping the NHS not a good thing?

Because it undermines the poor working conditions, underfunding and low pay experienced by NHS workers. 

As many of you know, my wife is a family therapist who works in mental health.

You can watch this video of the ward where she works in Newham, London. 

Her team are getting more young people admitted than ever before. 

Meanwhile, everyone is out clapping, bashing pans and cheering on the NHS under the illusion we’re saluting the England football team in their darkest hour. 

The reality is we’re cheering NHS people for doing a high-risk job for crap pay and are in denial about how their day is. 

And a lot of people clapping (maybe even you) are furloughed on 80% pay, going to the beach or getting pissed in Soho.

To be clear about the clapping thing

This article here describes how we feel in our home – click here to read – I’m an NHS doctor – and I’ve had enough of people clapping for me.

We’re sure that when you clap the NHS, it is with the best intention. 

I’m not bitching about my wife’s pay packet, she is highly qualified, and her salary reflects this. 

Confused and stuck

What motivated me to write this is to share the confusion I had at setting 12 Week goals, even though my projects are more focused than ever. 

But next to NHS workers and people losing their jobs, businesses and struggling with family loss and mental health, well I felt like I’m whining. 

I spent a week walking around our home, forgetting what I was doing, having to read my task list three times in the morning before I got going. 

The COVID lockdown and cabin fever was starting to hit me. 

Just get on with it.

I’ve read Viktor Frankl Man’s ‘Search for Meaning‘ and David Goggins Can’t Hurt Me, and both books have had a robust humanising effect on me.

Both books are people in extreme mental and physical situations, who find a way to make it, against all the odds. 

Last year I read the David Goggins book six times in four months when my Dad was ill and then died, on his 84th birthday!

Goggins helped me connect with my Dad’s death and experience grief rather than drama. 

Of course, you probably know the drama is often my preference, that is how good the Goggins book is. 

Purple haze and becoming unstuck

For two weeks, I’ve been in some haze, haemorrhaging energy and burning calories in my brain trying to work out my goals. 

It was a real issue, that is why I’m writing about it here. 

My three projects are: 

Cowork Tools, 

London Coworking Assembly 

my site 

I know where the revenue is coming from and what I’ve got to do to get there. 

Why is it so hard to write down a goal for each of these?

So that is what is up!

At the end of last week, it clicked where I’m stuck.

I was stuck because I don’t know what is going to happen.

Work and projects have a map, but I don’t know what is going to happen in the world. 

Of course, we never know what is going to happen, but now there is worldwide agreement ANYTHING could happen!

I mean we have a global pandemic, and the horror of colonialism, institutional racism and routine police brutality are a mainstream conversation – who thought that would ever happen?

#BLM

How July – December usually happen

July is the start of summer, and this year everything is on hold. 

We go to our family in Vigo, Spain in August. 

I have a birthday, and we come back then something happens.

School starts; something else happens. 

We do European Freelancers Week. 

I go to Coworking Europe and another Coworking retreat.

Then it is Christmas, so a trip to Poland, Argentina or Vigo to see family. 

But right now we’re staying home for the rest of 2020.

Now I know how to keep going.

Back when I was super depressed, I went to therapy every Tuesday afternoon in Stratford.  

About a year before we ended, I had a moment of realisation in my therapy session.

I was not depressed any more, but I did not know what else to do. 

My story, identity and even habit was ‘I’m depressed’ it was my narrative and operating system. 

The moment occurred for me like when Neo stands up in the Matrix. 

You know the part, Agent Smith shoots Neo like ten times, Neo dies, and Trinity kisses him. 

Neo then stands up, becomes present to his ability and stops the next round of bullets with his hand. 

The luxury of grief 

I was due to end therapy, and we had a winding down period, and then my Dad died, so we carried on for a few more months. 

Whenever I think back to last year, I wonder what would have happened to me if I did not have the luxury of the support and relationship of my therapist. 

That therapy was about grief and making sense of the future, not depression, self-loathing. 

We ended in January 2020, two weeks later, I went to Nashville to do the StoryBrand Guide training and hang out with my friends Maria and William. 

Maria’s son was my mate Matija, the co-founder of European Freelancers Week; he died of cancer aged 34 in 2018 while we were working on Freelancers Week. 

Matias is the guy sitting at the table in the header of all my social media profiles – he is still is a big deal for us. 

That’s all for this post – stay safe and be excellent to each other. 

How To Get Going with the 12-Week Year Plan.

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Planning Your Business 12 Weeks at a Time

With the summer months approaching Christmas is probably the furthest thing from most people’s minds. If you are hoping to build your current coworking space, or start a new one, now is the time to start looking towards the end of the year so 2021 can be more successful than you imagine. 

I recently spoke to Carsten of Desk Mag to find out when people are most likely to join a coworking space. His response was sometime around or after a major holiday. 

In the Northern Hemisphere (the States and Europe) most of the main holidays are after summer and into Christmas. 

This means that the majority of people who are joining a new coworking space will do so in September and in January. 

The same goes for many types of new business ventures. 

Most people don’t really know what they will be doing three months from now. 

Many times people will have a vague goal, reach that goal. However, once they actually get to the point they want to be at they don’t look back. They don’t even question if they could have gotten there in a more productive way. 

The 12-Week Year Plan 

I found a book a few years ago called The 12-Week Year. It explains the process of planning your goals 12 weeks at a time instead of 12 months. 

A great example of why the 12-week plan is important is the current situation everyone is experiencing with Covid19. 

Six months ago everyone was making their summer plans, whether it be for holidays or business, and now all of those plans have changed. 

By following the 12-week plan it allows you to be more flexible and adapt to whatever is happening in your community or across the globe.

I was given some great advice by Belinda about how to market during something like a global pandemic. 

She said, “don’t think about what you sell, but think about who you serve and what do they want you to be able to offer them right now?” 

Distancing does not mean Disconnecting

While you might not be able to operate your business like normal, you can still stay connected to the people you serve. 

A great example of this is doing things like uploading informational videos or articles to your website and social media accounts. 

You might not be able to sell right now, but you can make sure you aren’t forgotten about. 

Asking yourself what you can offer the people you serve can really help you move forward over the next 12 weeks. Even though you might feel stuck, not only at home but with your business goals as well. 

Making the 12-Week Year Plan Work

I started following the 12-week plan in 2016 while I was a member of a coworking space. We would meet every Monday and share our goals for the week. 

It was a great way to stay focused and have accountability. These meetings eventually stopped due to fluctuating commitments from the various members, but my friend Karen and I decided to carry on. 

Every Monday since 2016 Karen and I have an accountability call in which we state our goals and intentions that week to each other.

Even though Karen and I are in different careers, she runs a swimming school and I’m a freelancer, our ambitions and intentions have similarly evolved over the years. And we are both much more realistic about how we plan on meeting our goals.

The 12-Week Year has been instrumental in not only growing my business but also reaching my goals in a more realistic way. Here are some of the most important lessons I’ve learned and how they can help you grow your business or coworking space.

Accountability

Having an accountability partner ups your chances of being successful no matter what your goals are. 

For example, if I’m trying to lose weight I can be great at staying focused, eating well, and exercising…until I go on holiday. 

Once I’m on holiday my goals go out the window and I end up eating for pleasure, not health. After I return from holiday it’s super hard for me to get back on track. 

Having an accountability partner who will help remind you of your goals and call you out when you veer off track is so important. 

Finding a group of people, or even a single person, to talk about your goals each week will make you much more likely to get back on the wagon when you fall off. 

And we all fall off at some point. 

Building an Audience 

Many business owners and freelancers have days where they wake up and go into a panic about the number of customers and clients they have. 

We feel a sudden need to jump on social media and do what I call a “panic promotion” in hope that we’ll magically grow our clientele overnight. 

If you’ve tried this, you know it very rarely works. Our promotion might be great, but people won’t trust it or us. This is because it takes time, trust, and understanding to build an audience who is willing to spend their money on whatever it is that you’re offering.

Your audience can be seen as your community. Very often you’ll have two communities that can help you build your business. You’ll have the community that is inside your space, who will work with you, use your services, and can help grow your income. 

The other community, that can be equally important, is the one that won’t hire you or give you money directly, but they will support your business and help spread the word about what you do.

E-Mailing

When it comes to reaching out to potential clients or customers, many freelancers immediately think of social media. Social media is a really, really, really important aspect of building awareness, but one of the best things you can do for your business is to build an email list and actually use it. 

Why is email so underused as a tool for business when it’s now a more common form of communication than calling or even texting people? 

Fear. People get scared about sending emails when they aren’t confident about what they’re selling. 

There are two books, Youtility by Jay Baer and They Ask You Answer by Marcus Sheridan, that can really help you understand how important good emails are to any marketing plan. 

One of the key aspects of sending emails that people will actually read is to make sure they are useful, relevant, and timely. The more people benefit and trust the emails you send them, the more likely they are to open them.

 Having someone sign up for your email list is more valuable than a follow on social media where your post has a pretty good chance of getting lost among the other thousands of posts on someone’s feed. 

There’s a site called copyblogger.com that I use quite often. One of the stats on their website, which seems very believable to me, is that for every dollar spent on acquiring an email, you’ll get $40 in return. 

Never underestimate the importance of sending emails. 

Also, always have your email above the fold on your website and avoid pop-ups at all costs. They are annoying and can cause people to leave your website simply out of frustration or annoyance if they are on a cell phone because they can be hard to click out of.

Keeping Your Website Updated

Having a website is pointless if you aren’t updating it at least twice a week with quality content. This can be in the form of blogs, videos, articles…as long as it’s something interesting that helps you tell your story and connect with the people in your community. 

Part of the 12 Week Plan is to figure out what you’re going to post every week over the next three months. Having the topics figured out ahead of time makes achieving this goal a lot easier than just sitting in front of your computer every few days and trying to figure out what the heck you’re going to post. 

Some ideas for posts are:

Interviews with fellow freelancers or small business owners from your coworking space.

Talking about an event you’re hosting or going to.

The history of your business.

FAQs (this will allow your customers/clients to find answers themselves so you don’t need to waste time answering the same things over and over again.)

Whatever you write about, just make sure it allows your community to connect with you in some way.

Once you have these topics planned out, you can then coordinate the emails you’ll be sending to go along with the topics on your website.

Social Media

The three major social media outlets for businesses and freelancers are Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. 

LinkedIn has the people who are most likely to have money and are willing to spend it on a coworking space/other businesses. 

Facebook is where people go to waste time and Twitter..well it might help you get a few new followers, but it’s very quickly turning into a place of political discord, which isn’t going to be beneficial in growing your community. 

While it’s perfectly fine to use all forms of social media, LinkedIn is the best. It’s filled with business people on the hunt to do business with others. It’s also a paid platform which means people feel more invested to use it and take it seriously. 

If you decided to use LinkedIn to try and grow your community with the 12 Week Plan, make sure that anything you post on your website you also post on your LinkedIn Blog. People who post regularly on LinkedIn over longer periods of time tend to get a lot of attention. And don’t be afraid to post lengthy blogs on LinkedIn. Although fewer people will read them, more people will take action on a longer post. Don’t write a little and then make them click over to your website to read the rest, this is annoying and honestly comes off as a little desperate. 

The 12-Week Year Intention

Something that is important to keep in mind while working through the 12-Week Plan is your intention. The more you share your story, through your website, social media, and emails, the more people you will attract who can relate to you and your vision. While we all have to take the cash we can get at times, it’s important to always focus on the type of people you want to attract and work with. Otherwise, you can end up sucking the energy out of yourself, your business, your team, and your community. 

Communicating with people on a regular basis will allow your community to build trust with you and even look forward to hearing from you. Building a network is key to building your business over the next 12 weeks and eventually into 202

Join my weekly email to be first to hear when the 90 Day Plan gets published. Or listen to my webinar with OfficeRnD.

How to outrun anxiety and make the most of lock-down time

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Something clicked when lockdown began.

It was the start of the next ‘12 Week Year‘ segment, I’m standing in my broom cupboard office in Mainyard not sure what is going on. And the anxiety sets in before anyone else has prepared.

At that point, my main ‘12 Week Goal‘ was to stay alive and not lose my head to anxiety.

Human’s need certainty

It turns out as humans we all need some certainty. And 2020 was one of the most ‘certain’ years I was going to have in my life so far. 

In 2019 I received some of the best support and coaching I’ve ever had in my life. I attended a couple of rock-solid courses.

My therapy ended in January 2020 and after seven years, felt very complete about the whole thing.

I was at full throttle with the grand plans for the year ahead, and then COV-19 happened. 

It is like seeing an empty field when opening the door to your new house instead of everything inside.

I cried for at least a week.

So I’m lucky, in the way most people in the world are having to cope with COVID-19 being upset for a week with my silly changes is nothing.

Laëtitia, Željko and I talk about other peoples jobs, working from home and bullshit jobs in this podcast here. 

Coworking Values Podcast

All the horror of the depression and mental tailspin I was in a few years ago gives me perspective on what is happening now.

I’m delighted I can work at home, and not want to kill myself. That I have apps, people, and mental discipline to deal with working and keeping sane. 

One of the reasons I’m so pro coworking is because I lost my mind working at home on my own. Now, I’m ok.

Coworking saved my life.

When I joined Mainyard in Hackney back in 2013, I was in a bad place, and like my mate, Mike says in his talk, Coworking Saved My Life.

I’d tell you my story, but it is similar to Mike’s story in our Coworking Values Podcast here.

Right now, I’m in maintenance and focus mode – considering all the circumstances I’m doing great.

I followed Jonothan Stark’s advice in this early COVID-19 email and stuck to the good habits and ditch the bad ones – read it all here.

Really, the only bad habit I have right now is making myself Scooby Snack style sandwiches whenever bread accidentally arrives in our home.

In the first two weeks, I found it hard to focus. Like everyone, I was screaming to make sense of what was going on.

I’d like to be a better person, but I too was concerned about running out of toilet paper. 

I noticed anxiety rushing out of the inside of me somewhere, ready to take its place as my central operating system. 

Awareness brings change 

The best way to describe how it felt is when Neo stops the bullets in the Matrix. 

I could see and feel anxiety coming in, and I could see I had the power to stop it. 

Of course, I’m going to be anxious, but letting it totally control me? 

That would be nuts. 

I feel stress in my shoulders and sometimes the front of my head.  

So I look for ways to stop and step back when that sensation happens.

What has clicked for me here?

It is not COVID that hurts me or anything else, it is me doing too many things at the same time, struggling to complete anything and the anxiety that comes with it.

With the help of an app called Exist, I was a Beta tester when they launched and now I track and journal my work and behaviour more than ever.

Exist connects to your email, social, project tools and even Pocket. 

You rate your day, add in a score and micro journal for the day.

Another tool called Sunsama connects your Google Calendar and project tool in one place and opens every day with a page asking you to review your day and progress. 

Then at the end of the week, it delivers a few questions to review your week. 

There is no surprise here that I was doing too much, I always kinda knew.

 I connected, finally, this week how I’m kidding myself and let it go.

Less is more

In the first weeks of COVID, I wrote out pages of killer ideas for online events and other antics. 

I even mapped them out and gave them dates, launch sequences content maps. 

No one gives a shit about what is hanging out in your notebook, project tool or files on your computer.

I hit delete on all of those files! Because you know, Less is more.

Fear not! Usually, when I’ve had an idea, it comes back to me when I need it, or something even better comes up. 

Like Edison said in 1914 when a fire engulfed his factory, “it’s ok we just got rid of a load of rubbish”. 

In the middle of it all, Edison told his 24-year-old son, “Go get your mother and all her friends. They’ll never see a fire like this again.” 

The real fire for me. 

It is hitting publish and finishing things that are the real bolt of energy and progress for me.

And I’ve never quite got this into my head, we now have 25 episodes of the Coworking Values Podcast, and the Coworking Symposium is filling up fast.

BTW Get in quick! We only have room for 5000 people to attend on the webinar platform so when it gets to there, we’ll start a waiting list. 
RSVP for free here.

Coworking Symposium 2020

Stacking the website bricks

Every day I methodically work on my website to sell audio courses and make a membership using Wishlist plugin.

There pages for my new services like podcast set up and webinar production, alongside the usual marketing consulting. 

I’ve never had a website that is so well planned and linked together, and already it is starting to work. 

The small steps every day are what make it happen in real life. 

Being forced to stop and reconsider everything was one of the main things that enabled all of this progress.

Still uncertain 

There is still a massive amount of uncertainty, it seems all anyone is talking about is some combination of when we go back vs should we go back. 

I did so much rushing around in my head, and in real life, that was stopped in its tracks, and now it has been long enough I can see I don’t need any of that. 

I want my broom cupboard back in my coworking space, but it will be somewhere to go to work, not rush to. 

A New Freelance Hope In The COVID-19 Crisis

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How has this epidemic changed you?

What are you doing more of in this crisis?
How has your business changed?
Where is it going now?
Share in the Instagram comments here.

Before we get into this. 

I need to point out these words are by a healthy white man living in London with enough money to make it through the week. 

Do I need to point it out?

Yes. 

We know people who are going through all manner of health, family and economic hardships.

It would be crappy to let you read on thinking this is all milk and honey. 

You will hear people proclaiming ‘never waste a good crisis!’

And while I agree with this, it needs to have a responsibility in the framing. 

Cashing in on a crisis is horrific. 

As I write, I’m thinking of a few people I’ve seen on twitter who should know better. 

They are posting lame polls with the #COVID type hashtags and tagging their mates.

It is an attention-seeking and tasteless use of twitter.

One of them DM’d me to share his poll, and it broke my heart. 

He is very experienced in life, the universe and everything, he does not need to be ambulance-chasing. 

Get well together

In contrast, I saw Brene Brown write something like ‘we can all get well together, or we can all stay sick together.’ 

This worked for me at an intimate level, and at the community level, she was talking about.

View this post on Instagram

There are so many who must work in exposed environments. ⁣ ⁣ There are adults and children who are not safe at home. ⁣ ⁣ The complete disregard for others shown by people who are actually safe and ABLE to stay at home but choosing to ignore or scoff at the guidelines is NOT “rugged American individualism” – it is entitlement, ignorance, and/or cruelty. ⁣ ⁣ We are successfully flattening the curve in many areas around the world. ⁣ ⁣ We can rise strong if we can stick together and STAY STRONG. ⁣ ⁣ Please check the link in profile for an important article that takes us inside hospitals for a real look at the sacrifices being made. ⁣ ⁣ We thank the people risking their lives for us by respecting the science and their requests to stay home if you can. ⁣

A post shared by Brené Brown (@brenebrown) on

(I know, EVERYTHING Brene says works for me.)

Focus on your good habits

Another early Co-vid epidemic boost for me was Jonothan Stark writing this,

‘If you find that your routine is suddenly out of whack, you might want to step back and take inventory of your good habits.’

(Click here for the full post.)

I’ve been stalling in sending this email for a few weeks because the emails I wrote were not helpful. 

They were screaming tombs of uncertainty and terror, I mean I want to be honest, but it has to help you. 

New hope in this crisis?

As time went on a new starting point revealed itself. 

All my workshops in London and at the camps at coworking conferences I attend were dead in the water. 

This meant finding something else, I knew what to do, but I realised I did not know how to do it. 

Do you find people say things like this a lot? 

‘Why don’t you just…?’ 

I say something like that more than I’d care to admit.

We mean no harm, and often these dumb words come from a place of good intention. 

For example:

When you are struggling mentally, think you are a loser, and your depression is inducing thoughts of suicide. 

People ask ‘do you know what is making you depressed?‘ 

We’ll if I knew that I would not be £ucking depressed, would I? Dumb Ass!

The next direction 

In this case, I thought I’ll put all my workshops and talks online!

And that is what I set about to do. 

If you have been reading here a while you’ll remember our Trello course, it flopped.

Offline it rocked, but we went about selling it online in the wrong way, I’m ok with this. 

The whole thing turned out to be an epic learning curve, mainly about how to accurately help other people. 

And most of that accuracy is asking the right questions upfront – check out the books ‘A More Beautiful Question‘ and ‘The Mum Test‘ to help with this. 

So I grabbed my trusted 12 Week Book and Marketing Made Simple and set about making a plan. 

That ended up with a visit to AppSumo for MailPoet and Soundwise.

BTW if you have a WordPress website and send an email or Woo-Commerce grab Mailpoet. 

There is lifetime access for $49 – it is 1000% easier to use than Mailchimp – which I’ve tried to learn for a decade now!

Get lifetime access to MailPoet here.

The future is audio

So everything I do going online in audio format, I don’t know why I did not get to this before.

I have the gift of the gab – Jon Buscall told me so it must be true. 

This is heading in the direction of a membership site when the time is right, but it has to pass ‘The Mum Test’ first.’

That is after the next 12 weeks, I don’t know what it looks like, but there is something there!

I’ve wanted a 100% online existence since I joined twitter and meet up in 2008. 

I allowed myself to get distracted and sidetracked, now I’m forced to take focused action. 

I posted a few thoughts on Instagram about it here, I’d welcome your comments here.

Share in the comments and let me know what has changed for you in the last few weeks because of the crisis?

What are you doing more of, how has your business changed, and where is it going now? The comments are here.

How To Market Your Coworking Space In A Coronavirus World

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OMG, who the hell is selling in the Coronavirus downturn?

Well, hopefully, a lot of people as we need to keep the economy going. Which is completely different just profiteering from it and ambulance-chasing. marketing

I’ve been keeping a keen eye on how people are dealing with marketing and communication, the language in use and online stunts, in the last two weeks. 

In that time, it quickly got to the point where the last thing I wanted in my email was another lesson how to work remotely or to hear ‘our number one concern as a company is the safety of our….’ 

Or while I walk around our local supermarket chain and every five minutes they announce ‘we’re are doing everything we can to serve you during the coronavirus.’

And I mean EVERY five minutes. 

Side note: For some no bollox advice on remote working lookup Pilar Ort and Lisette Sutherland. 

I’ve learning how to be a remote worker from them since 2012. Check out Pilar and her podcast at Virtual Not Distant here and Lisette Sutherland here.

What does a marketer do?

Smart and hilarious Mark Ritson wrote this epic opinion piece, and I’m with him.

Get the fuck on with it rather than spending time on labels, press releases and comms.

Read the full post here: Forget about empathetic emails during the coronavirus outbreak and start making your brand money.

Don’t get me wrong; a lot of my friends are writing incredibly useful stuff to help people deal with life at this time. 

And your marketing doesn’t have to stop just because there is a pandemic. As they say “distancing doesn’t mean disconnected”.

How To Gear Up Your Business Best In The Covirus Shut Down.

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Just because the World is shutting down, it does not mean your business has to.

Hard as it may seem right at this moment in time, there is plenty of good work to be done in the downtime, so you can come back stronger than ever.

Are you on Linkedin? 

Have you seen the onslaught of commentary about the effects of the Co-virus on our businesses and the economy? 

My friend Leah from Norway posted that realistic and heartwarming video message.

Leah’s main point was to use the downtime to gear up and rise above being down about business slowing down. 

She runs an in-person communication training company with her husband, Oscar. And the isolation order wallops her business so there’s not a lot of in-person happening right now.

Her main point is to actively use the downtime to gear up and rise above the slowing down of your business.

And with that, I’m going to use this time to gear up, get blogs, podcasts and online training completed.

It’s tough

Friends in events got struck and I heard how tough work is getting from talking with a lot of you this week.

>> If you are in events get to the Event Manager Blog go remote webinar here on Wednesday 18th 

I’ve spoken with more than one coworking space owner who is worried because they don’t know what is going to happen. 

Most independent coworking spaces are home to people who run their micro or small businesses and have their struggles with the world grinding to halt.

Between cancelled events, postponed orders, supply chain issues and people stopping buying anything expect toilet roll the uncertainty is everywhere. 

It seems very unfair that people who have built their own business or project are now faced with the injustice of something like the Co-virus bringing the world to a stop. 

How do you keep going? 

I get the sense many of my people are wondering if they have what it takes to keep going.

But it does not have to be like this. 

I believe that just because the world comes to a stop, our business and projects don’t have to. 

All my events for the year got cancelled one after another, I too was spinning earlier this week.

A lot of them I was talking at or running workshops. I am even more pissed off as I have put so much effort into listening over the last two years and building a message that connects and helps people in the coworking industry. 

I feel for people like:

Marko in Prague. He got funding for a coworking symposium at the university where he is an assistant professor. 

Mark and Manel in Spain, who put so much effort into raising the bar of the content even higher for their 2020 conference.

The German Coworking Federation conference held out to the last minute and then finally cancelled!  

And our monthly London Coworking Assembly breakfasts will probably become an online event for a bit. 

But then

I spent most of this week in a funk. It was the first anniversary of my Dad’s death and everything is cancelled.

My head was certainly not in the right place, but these days I know it is ok not to be ok sometimes. 

Then Thursday happened.

2 pm UK time I get a WhatsApp message from my mate Hector, founder of Included, the worlds most excellent collaborative buying platform for the coworking industry. 

We have a group call in a few hours; last-minute get together can you come?

The European Coworking Assembly, Included and the amazing Women Who Coworking movement, the call is a joint effort between them.

Four hours later, there are around forty people on the call. 

From every corner of the earth, people were sharing about the co-virus and how to deal with it. 

There was uncertainty all around. 

But there was also an immense sense of community. And it is always a joy for me to see so many people I know from so many different places online at the same time.